


everything’s better (down where it’s wetter)

by cloudtalking



Category: Naruto
Genre: F/F, If the Uzumaki are going to be overpowered why can’t we have fun w it 2k19, M/M, Mermaid au kind of, Pining, Shikamaru is gay and having a rough time, Takes place while sasuke is w orochimaru and naruto is traveling, jiraiya is a Really Creepy Dude And It’s Addressed But Not Really, the InoShikaCho kids can punt me over a roof
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 15:37:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17246834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloudtalking/pseuds/cloudtalking
Summary: for the naruto year end bash prompt: Shikamaru doesn’t know how to swim and Naruto thinks that inexcusable.“I can’t swim. I don’t particularly like to be in places I can’t move around in.”“Oh!” Naruto grinned. “In that case, I’ll just teach you! Believe it!”“No—“ He was about to express how terribly against that idea he was when Naruto swam close enough to wrap his arm around Shikamaru’s waist. “No.” he said again, quieter this time.





	everything’s better (down where it’s wetter)

**Author's Note:**

> idk who requested this but i hope u like it!! i tried my best even if im not so sure this is exactly what u wanted it kinda got away from me lmao

When Shikamaru got his orders, he very nearly tossed them back in Tsunade’s face, save for Ino’s very pointed _blow-your-ascent-to-power-and-i’ll-set-Ibiki-on-you_ face. It’s a threat she’s followed through on before, and though Ibiki would be hard-pressed by the original InoShikaCho to touch a hair on his head, he’s still scarred by the mental torture of spending a month interning at T&I.

It wasn’t that he thought the mission was outside his capabilities, but it was outside of his team’s skill set. Ino was meant for capture and intelligence missions where she could practice for inheriting Ibiki’s seat. Chōji was meant for the close-combat opponents Shikamaru and Ino were wasted on. He was more interested in protecting his teammates than any actual military positions, and would be the best-suited out of all of them for leading a clan— Shika often wondered about how many people overlooked Chouji’s political strategy, but a kindness-kills campaign like the one he ran depended on it. Shikamaru was meant to be the right hand to a Hokage the trio had already picked out, and though this mission aided the candidate, a mission like this one was more suited to team eight.

“You’re to join up with Naruto and Jiraiya outside the village,” Tsunade explained. “Konoha has let my grandmother’s home rot for too long.”

“What’s the dead last doing assigned to an excavation mission?” Shikamaru asked, knowing the answer but knowing above all that this was one of the many things he wasn’t supposed to.

Tsunade rolled her eyes, but obliged him. “ _Uzu_ shio. _Uzu_ maki. It’s in his blood, and he’s the only Konoha ninja besides yours truly allowed the right to open her gates.”

Chōji and Ino exchanged glances behind him, not nearly as subtle as they had the capability to be. _Later,_ he signed behind his back, shutting them up before their quiet conversation got to be too obvious.

Tsunade raised her eyebrows, and Shikamaru wished for a moment that the sannin had never returned home. At least with a Hokage as unfit as Hatake Kakashi he wouldn’t have had to worry about anyone paying attention to what he knew— not because Hatake wouldn’t notice, but simply because he’d be too busy driving the village down the drain to care.

(Shikaku drank more for the duration Hatake had been considered as the Hokage candidate than he had during the entire period Yoshino was considering a divorce. It was as impressive as it was terrifying.)

“You’re expected to rendezvous at the big hot-springs village between here and water country, if our information is right. If not, report back for more instructions.”

“Ah, ‘scuse me,” Chōji said, raising his hand half-heartedly— still higher than he ever did in class— “but why wouldn’t the info be right?”

Ino and Shikamaru braced themselves for the next hour of Tsunade’s ranting about her _idiot teammates_ and their _fucking cowardice, I swear to god if they don’t get over themselves and come back to the village—_

Shikamaru sighed. Fucking troublesome.

(Ino paused, midway between shoving her missions-only pillow in her bag, causing her counterparts to pause with her.

“Is that… Sakura’s future?” Ino asked, well enough aware of the intricacies of her (if she had anything to say about it) girlfriend-to-be’s life to guess.

Shikamaru was too stunned by Ino’s show of vulnerability to say any of the thoughts running through his head— he’d rarely ever seen a version of her that wasn’t full of her Yamanaka-brand surety, even when they were kids and they were still being broken in for the violence of their futures.

Chōji, who Shikamaru thanked the Nara clan’s gods for every goddamn day, put a hand on her shoulder and promised, “we’ll never let it be.”)

Meeting up with the duo was less of a hassle than expected, and Chōji had to take first watch because of it.

“You’re worse than the Godaime,” Ino said, snickering into her hand. “At least she’s never bet against a Nara-Yamanaka pair.”

“Yeah, well one of us has to lose,” Chōji huffed. “We can’t all have fucking gambling superpowers.”

“We don't.” Shikamaru smirked, tilting his head up to add some inches to his already pretty much illusionary height (the ponytail had its uses, otherwise putting it up in the mornings would’ve been too much of a hassle). “We just make sure to bet against you.”

While Chōji was having a conniption, Ino lead the two towards the toad-summoners— Shikamaru put his hands in his front pockets and leant back as far as necessary to put off his _no-fucks-given_ vibe and to not look Naruto in the eyes as to betray the act.

“Can it, you old pervert!” Naruto yelled, interrupting whatever depraved comment Jiraiya had made to Ino and attempting to bean the man with the nearest plate.

“Aw, but—“

“Shut your ass!”

“Who raised you, a goddamned pig?”

“Uh, I don’t know actually,” Naruto paused their— admittedly entertaining— screaming match to scratch at his chin in the confused closed-eye expression that was about fifty percent of the faces he made at the academy. “Jiji, I guess? and maybe the animal masks? or the caretakers? but not really.”

Jiraiya had the grace to look a bit perturbed, and maybe even guilty of Shikamaru felt like reaching. “Shit, kid. You raised yourself then?”

“Yeah, but I turned out great, believe it!”

Ignoring that lie, Jiraiya put a conspiratorial hand over his mouth between Naruto and the previously-forgotten trio. “He really was raised by a pig then, huh?”

“Fuck you, Ero-Sennin!”

Later, during his own shared shift at night watch, Shikamaru came to the conclusion that they would have found the two regardless of what town they had been in based on the volume alone. Shikaku and Inoichi made sure the trio knew that the Toad Sage was Konoha’s spymaster, but what with carting around the bundle of kill-me-clementine it was hard to match name to reputation.

“Thinking ‘bout your crush?” Ino bumped shoulders with him, being the only person Shikamaru feared enough not to fall asleep around when he wasn’t supposed to on missions. Honorary sister or not, Ino was ruthless when she wanted to be and cruel even when she didn’t.

Shikamaru sighed, which was an answer in itself and easier than words.

“He’s never going to catch on,” Ino said in glee, “and you’re never going to tell him. It’s amazing.”

“‘S too much work,” Shikamaru groans.

“Yeah, well one day Hinata or her cousin is gonna drink enough liquid confidence to ask, and then it’s all over,” she laughed.

“Neji?” Shikamaru hadn’t known that was the case, but it sounded right enough. Naruto could make a rock fall in love with him, and the Hyuuga was close enough.

“Yeah, and that sand boy. Temari’s brother.”

“Kankuro?”

“Nah, he was too busy debating over which member of team eight he liked more to notice anyone else. Gaara, I think.”

So Shikamaru’s rivals in love were a forever-shy but pretty as hell Hyuuga, her emotionally dead cousin, and a literal fucking demon. “Good to know.”

“It’s my job to tell you when you’re screwing yourself over,” Ino said, though they both knew she only stepped in about half as often as she should. “At least all I’ve got to worry about is Sasuke and Lee, and Sasuke doesn’t even swing that way.”

“Lee, though,” Shikamaru pointed out, tilting his head. Lee was more deserving of the love Sakura was capable of than Ino, even if the trio would snatch it from him in a heartbeat to ensure her happiness.

“I wouldn’t mind adding him in, if he really does get her to fall for him,” she admitted, tapping her sandaled feet against the dirt. “But Sakura is still stuck on the idea she’ll have to give up her career once she marries a man— her parents drove it into her, I think— and so long as it’s just us in the endgame she probably won’t resort to that kind of thinking.”

The _endgame_ was the InoShikaCho approved plan for the future, one where Shikamaru was the jōnin commander under his Hokage husband while Chouji had the council in his pocket and Ino and Sakura ran T&I and ANBU respectively.

“Speaking of, Sakura might want to run the hospital instead,” Shikamaru pointed out. “Tsunade’s setting her up for it.”

“Yeah, but Shizune would be better suited, or even Hinata once she pulls herself together. Sakura’s only other real option is Hokage, and that’s only in the event that your boy fucks up.”

Shikamaru could almost see Ino tearing the hat right off of Tsunade’s head to gift to her intended, not that he wasn’t doing the same in a roundabout way. Shikamaru couldn’t help but want it too, knowing that Ino was a kingmaker enough not to be too put out by the long hours both she and Sakura would have to put in to maintain their power. It was hard to imagine Naruto actually enjoying a life as restricted by work and duty as Hokage, but that bridge would be burned when they got to it.

“He’s not mine,” Shikamaru said instead.

“You’re damn right,” Ino agreed. “And until you get off your ass, he won’t be.”

Then they switched shifts, and Shikamaru fell back asleep almost instantly.

The area between fire and water country labeled as whirlpool country was almost too impossible for him to believe anyone had ever lived there at all.

For one thing, it was mostly water, and that water was mostly whirlpool. Naruto seemed to think it was the coolest shit ever, but Shikamaru made sure to stay a few feet from the land’s edge at all times. For another, what little wasn’t covered in the maelstroms was covered in similar danger; brightly-colored poison brambles, fish with more teeth than scales, and fucking quicksand among other things covered the expanse of it.

“How the hell did this place fall?” Shikamaru muttered, because any village able to view this death-trap of a country as home was certainly invincible.

“No one knows except Kiri and the Uzumaki, and neither the bloody mist nor the scattered clan are spilling,” Jiraiya answers, oddly solemn for how fucked in the head he usually acts.

(Shikamaru’s watch with Naruto had been mostly Naruto talking and Shikamaru trying not to stare too hard at his collarbones while his beloved jacket remained tied around his waist. Shikamaru tuned back in when Naruto started talking about his Jiraiya would make him use the _Oiroke_ more times than he could count before he would really start paying attention to him.

Ino would have to explain to Naruto that this behavior was _not normal_ when they got back to Konoha. Maybe then he won’t grieve the man so much when Tsunade _fucking_ _murders_ him _._ )

Shikamaru turns to the object of his affections, but as with most things, Naruto hasn’t noticed.

“Yo, dare me to ride a whirlpool?” Naruto called to Chōji, wearing the fox-grin that almost always brought hell down on them during academy days.

“Bet,” Chōji said, mirroring the grin as best he could without the animalistic features Naruto possessed.

“Maybe you shouldn’t—“ Jiraiya tried, but the attempt to stop Naruto from doing anything he’d been told not to do was better aimed at stopping him from being born in the first place.

Naruto hit the water hard in a way that clan children never made the mistake of doing, but caught himself despite the fact, and promptly jumped into the nearest spiraling mass of water he could find. Coincidentally, it also happened to be the biggest one.

“Every fucking time,” Jiraiya mumbled under his breath, much to the confusion of the other three, but they were too absorbed in the show Naruto was making of himself to address it at the moment.

(Later, when Shikamaru had been on more missions with Naruto, he’d realize what the spymaster meant. If there was something tremendous that could happen on a mission, Naruto would find it and multiply it times ten. He was fucking troublesome to be in love with.)

At first, it was like watching someone get hit dead-on by a flying boulder, or maybe one of Tsunade’s punches. Naruto was standing upright and then he was whipped around wildly by the tempest he’d trapped himself within, spinning around fast enough to come apart atom by atom.

Shikamaru’s brain blanked, entirely helpless to the trouble Naruto had managed to get himself into. Maybe this was how Uzushio had fallen— idiot Uzumaki triple-dog-daring themselves into suicide.

Then, in between Naruto’s attempts to yell the whirlpool into submission, he got sucked in.

“Did i just kill Naruto?” Chōji asked, vague panic painting his face.

“Probably not?” Ino peered over the edge to where Naruto had seemingly disappeared. “Shikamaru should go after him, just to make sure.”

With his two options being arguing with Ino or drowning, it wasn’t a difficult decision.

Jiraiya covered his eyes with the back of his hand and looked up as if he could avoid the problem by not seeing it. “That’s not a good idea, kid, this place won’t kill an Uzumaki but—“

“Give him mouth to mouth,” Ino instructed, Chōji giving him two thumbs-up from behind her back.

“Hey, wait, Shikamaru—“

He took a swan dive off the land’s edge into the mouth of the maelstrom that swallowed his love. Ino would make his obituary appropriately poetic, he was sure, remaking him as a tragic hero fit with hubris against his own skills.

(“The kid can at least swim, right?” Jiraiya asked, sitting on a mossy log that probably had teeth growing somewhere out of it. Unfortunately, even the Akimichi’s nomadic ancestors probably wouldn’t have stooped low enough to take a bite out of him.

Ino and Chōji shrugged. “He’s not completely hopeless,” the Yamanaka said. “He’ll figure it out.”

“Shikaku is going to fucking murder me.”

“We’re planning on it.” Chōji chimed.

“What?”)

Coming out the other end of the whirlpool— disregarding how unlikely he’d thought that’d be— The water was surprisingly clear, for how opaque it was from the surface. It didn’t even sting his eyes, though his lungs were feeling a nasty burn. Unfortunately, being able to see at all meant being able to see the masses of deadly flora and fauna awaiting him.

A fish that looked something between an eel and a shark swam disconcertingly close to him, opening its massive maw wide enough to give Shikamaru a horrifying close-up of _both of it’s jaws, what the fuck._

He tried to jerk away, but the laws of physics were warped against him, and his chūnin vest weighed heavy enough to tip the scales entirely in the eel-shark’s favor.

Closing his eyes and bracing himself for decapitation started out logical and ended up almost embarrassing when it never came. Shikamaru blinked up at the eel-shark through the bubble it inexplicably blew over his head. He took one desperate breath and then another, glad for the opportunity to recover properly without Ino pouncing on him the second he broke character.

Looking closer at the eel-shark, there seemed to be a seal hidden atop the tongue of the second jaw, sinking back into the recesses of the creature’s throat.

Shikamaru was still scared shitless of the senbon-teeth and the poison-potent colors, but looking out at the rest of the frankly terrifying populace of Uzushio’s waters, he figured this one was probably a friend.

 _Momo_ , he decided, deep in the parts of his mind that still called Ino sis. _You’ll be Momo._

Momo turned their back to him, wiggling in a way that was probably supposed to be inviting but looked entirely too snakelike to trust. He winced, but wrapped his hands around Momo and prayed it wasn’t the skin of these creatures that warranted nature’s venom-warning.

It was quickly apparent that Momo, despite their frankly impressive size and threat-level— which, judging by the way the shoals parted at seeing them, was not at all inconsiderate— was not capable of lugging around a weapon-laden chūnin all on their own. Shikamaru, despite acknowledging this, was similarly incapable of relieving them both the extra burdens if he valued his title as a shinobi.

Momo smacked him with their tail (fin? body?), and Shikamaru—however reluctantly— got to kicking like he had seen Naruto do while he was busy splashing around the village in an attempt to water-walk. Really, everyone should learn water-walking in their academy days and spare anyone the trouble of further nautical adventures.

Momo might as well have ended their tentative friendship then and there when they turned sharp enough to dislodge Shikamaru from their back, sending him careening into a quick-finned shoal that parted to avoid catching him mid-sink.

“Fucking shit,” Shikamaru spat out, hands flailing through surprisingly-resistant water on instinct and only managing to further discombobulate himself before something else came up behind him and he jerked around violently.

“Shika— _ack_ , _shit_!” Naruto shrieked, arms moving to protect his already injured ribs. “What the fuck, Shikamaru!”

“Oh, it’s just you,” Shikamaru said, as if his heart wasn’t beating out of his chest. “You should be a little more happy to see me, you know. I jumped in after to save you.”

“Save me?” Confusion crinkled the space between Naruto’s eyes. “I’m fine! Uzushio’d never hurt me, right?”

The water seemed to rush faster around them in agreement, heavens opening up to shine enough light on them that the sand seemed to sparkle.

Asking Naruto if he’d befriended the personified spirit of a ravaged village would sound stupid if he was wrong. He didn’t dare risk it.

“Okay then,” Shikamaru said, drawing out the syllables to stall while his brain processed that juicy bit of info. “We need to get back to the team.”

Naruto pouted and the water darkened, shadows stretching far across the sands while unmentionable creatures began to crawl from between the cracks in the abyss. “Do we have to?”

Shikamaru swallowed his heart down in an attempt to keep it from leaping out of his throat, not that it helped much. “I— I can’t swim.”

“What?” Naruto tilted his head, stopping the horrorterror armies in their tracks because his close-eyed confusion was too cute for anyone unaccustomed to do anything but stare.

“That’s why we need to leave,” Shikamaru continued, glad for his brain being faster than his mouth. “I can’t swim. I don’t particularly like to be in places I can’t move around in.”

“Oh!” Naruto grinned, chasing the shadows away. “In that case, I’ll just teach you! Believe it!”

“No—“ He was about to express how terribly against that idea he was when Naruto swam close enough to wrap his arm around Shikamaru’s waist. “ _No_.” he said again, quieter this time.

“Just swim with me, yeah?” Naruto encouraged, letting him go and starting on his ascent towards the sunlit surface. Shikamaru did his best to follow, catching Momo’s eye when he looked down and finding himself on the receiving end of an eerily ino-like grin, senbon-teeth and all.

Shikamaru fixed his gaze back on the surface and redoubled his efforts, however ungraceful. Fuck friendship, he only had room for one emotionally manipulative man-eater in his life.

Breaching the top, Momo’s magic bubble popped around Shikamaru’s head, and he only then realized that Naruto hadn’t been wearing any bubble at all.

Interrupting thoughts of _his whiskers are gills holy shit his whiskers are totally gills I’ve had dreams about getting down and dirty with a fish_ Naruto hugged him close, managing to keep them both afloat even when Shikamaru’s brain short-circuited and lost any inclination towards survival. “You did great, Shika!”

 _Shika._ He felt like a bomb seconds from detonation. “It’s nothing,” he muttered, trying not to lean too obviously into the warm body holding him.

Naruto pulled back so he could smile at Shikamaru with his whole fucking face _is that even possible_. “I can’t wait to tell Sakura about what’s down there! She’s a real nerd about this stuff, you know, and Uzushio is so cool! My people are fucking awesome!”

Shikamaru couldn’t remember much about what was down there besides the reef and the frights that it contained, but that was probably the point. Uzushio, even fallen, was probably the best at being hidden out of any of the villages.

Naruto was still yapping on about the sights, but his mouth was a little too attention-grabbing for Shikamaru to pay attention to the words coming out of it. Did he always have those cute little canines poking out?

“Shika?” Naruto asked, adjusting his hands around Shikamaru’s chest and _oh,_ he could feel their breaths mingling, too close to shrug it off as something it wasn’t.

Well, fuck it then.

Shikamaru kissed Naruto hard enough to send them both toppling back underwater, because it was one thing worth the effort. They didn’t come back up until Ino started screaming at them from the surface.

(Opening his eyes in between kisses, Shikamaru could see the slits on Naruto’s cheeks opening up and filtering water in and out, brushing against Shikamaru’s own cheeks.

Noticing his attentions, Naruto grinned and wiggled his gills in a way that was a lot off-putting and somehow still attractive for _holes in Naruto’s skin what._

“You like ‘em?” He didn’t know the fucking half of it. “Auntie showed me how to open them.”

“Auntie?”

“Yeah, literally everyone in Uzushio is either related to me or honorary family. Auntie said that it’s good I’m only half Uzumaki so I can bring in new genes or whatever.”

“Naruto, everyone in Uzushio died when our parents were kids.”

“Nah, they just went underwater, but they’re trying to keep it lowkey.”

_“What.”)_

**Author's Note:**

> happy 2k19!!


End file.
